


The Waters and the Wilds

by iguanastevens



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Violence and Injury, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, YOI Secret Skater 2019, i spent so much time looking up stuff on the ecology of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains, knight/fairy with a lot of twists, not explicitly romantic but english doesn't really have a good word for it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguanastevens/pseuds/iguanastevens
Summary: The trees sing of winter when Otabek first finds the wanderer.He pays them little mind, for there is nothing unusual in the sweet, slow notes of frost and darkness. They are too sleepy to do more than drink in the sun’s meager rays and sigh, settling down to wait for spring. It’s not until the harsh call of crows cuts through the still morning that he lifts his head and listens.They are curious, but they are not afraid. Most have never seen a creature such as this, with its strange, loose skin and soft cries, but a few of the oldest remember a name from long ago and soon it echoes through the dreaming trees.***In which Yuri and Otabek do not wander so much as they follow a path that they can't yet see.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuri!!! on Ice Secret Skater 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [louciferish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/gifts).



> Hi Lou!! Funny story, I had a completely different fic planned but then I decided it wasn't really working for me and now I'm back on my fantasy/fae bullshit bc let's be real, I live here.   
> After your fae!otayuri fic, this settled firmly into my brain and I hope you enjoy it. Second part should be up on Saturday or Sunday, after I finish grading exams.

The trees sing of winter when Otabek first finds the wanderer.

He pays them little mind, for there is nothing unusual in the sweet, slow notes of frost and darkness. They are too sleepy to do more than drink in the sun’s meager rays and sigh, settling down to wait for spring. It’s not until the harsh call of crows cuts through the still morning that he lifts his head and listens.

They are curious, but they are not afraid. Most have never seen a creature such as this, with its strange, loose skin and soft cries, but a few of the oldest remember a name from long ago and soon it echoes through the dreaming trees.

_Danger?_

_Perhaps._

_Weak-_

_Ours._

_Danger?_

Otabek doesn’t recognize the name they’re shouting. The language of crows is not as immutable as that of the firs and larches, happy as they are to borrow and invent new words whenever the need arises. Still, he knows the beast of which they speak.

He just doesn’t know why the man is here.

A gust of wind startles the crows from their perches. The branches burst into a cloud of black feathers, and they grumble their complaints as he approaches the dying thing that should have been theirs. Dry, brittle needles crunch under Otabek’s feet.

The wanderer’s eyes twitch open at the sound, and around the pools of black pupil, they are the same brilliant greenish-blue of the lake. It gives Otabek a moment’s pause: he had not expected to find summer.

Chapped, bloodless lips shape his weak breath into a whisper hoarser than a crow’s cry.

“Fuck off.”

Otabek huffs out a silent, bemused laugh that curls into white steam.

Interesting. He hadn’t intended to call heat into his form, as if mocking the man slumped against the rocks, too cold to shiver.

“You should not have come.” He sends a tendril of warmth, just enough to melt the answer waiting in the wanderer’s mouth. “Why are you here?”

For a moment, he expects another curse.

“I followed the path. It was supposed to take me home.”

“There is no path.”

He looks like a wild thing with his moon-bright eyes and grey-tinged skin, half-hidden in the folds of his torn cloak – a wild thing, but not one that belongs here.

Otabek gathers the mountains around himself until they are as close to a village as his will can bring them. It will take several hours to reach it. It is probably enough. 

“This is not your fate,” he says. “But know this: if you choose to return, you will never leave.”

Otabek sighs his warmth into the Wanderer.

***

Otabek is listening to the deep _crack_ of the thawing lake the second time he finds his Wanderer.

“I told you not to return,” he says to the man standing among the pale green tips of snowdrops that had begun to poke from the damp soil.

“I am not here. I am dreaming.” He stumbles as he turns. He’s no longer pale with cold: his cheeks are flushed, and the fever boils in his gaze. “I don’t like it. My skin is too tight. It won’t let me breathe.”

“Why are you here?”

“I followed the path.”

He staggers. Otabek watches him fall, watches the wind swell and gently lay him on a patch of smooth, soft earth. 

“I told them they weren’t allowed to- to go-“ A cough breaks his words apart.

There is no path.

The earth rumbles, voicing Otabek’s unease. He does not harm those lost travelers who unknowingly cross into his waters and his wilds, and he does not intervene if their destiny comes to an end there. It was those who marched with iron blades, those who thought to hunt and steal and own whose bones he left to the birds and trees and beasts.

His Wanderer did not search, but he had come back.

And yet…

This time, he brings them to a clear, cold stream that laughs as it tumbles over the rocks.

“This is not your fate,” he says. “But know this: if you choose to return, you will never leave.” 

Otabek brings a chill from the stream to drive out his Wanderer’s fever and thinks of snowdrops, undamaged by clumsy, staggering steps.

***

  
The midsummer breeze carries the scent of blood when his Wanderer appears a third time.

Otabek asks the wind where it had come from, but such gusts are absentminded, playful things that might carry their new toys for seconds or days before losing interest, and it does not remember where this one was found. Instead, the breeze speaks excitedly of moss and firs and sticky, heavy sap, of grass and currents and water, before it races past him and disappears.

He doesn’t like this. He is a being of patterns and rules, some as quick as a dragonfly’s wings and others so, so slow, slower than rock giving way to the trickle of melted snow. This is a pattern, yes, but he sees only the barest hint of the forces guiding their seasons-long dance.

When he finds his Wanderer wreathed in pink-tinged eddies at the river’s mouth, Otabek does not ask why he has come before he asks a nest of chicks to remember how it felt to become creatures of bone and blood within their white shell walls. The grass offers smooth, strong leaves it grows to push away the scars of nibbling insects; the crows, now more curious than hungry, mention the bright itch of fresh feathers.

 _Why does he come?_ Otabek asks the mountain. _Why do you bring him here?_

 _Because snow melts in spring,_ replies the river.

 _Because the sun will rise and set and rise again,_ reply the flowers.

 _Because all that lives becomes me, and I become all that lives,_ replies the earth.

“What are you?” Otabek asks his Wanderer.

“I was wounded.” The man gingerly pushes himself up until he is sitting unsteadily on the rocky shore. “I was ill, and before that, I was freezing. Now I do not know what I am.”

“Do you know what I am?”

“Yes. But I do not understand.” That blue-green gaze stares through Otabek with eyes that reflect the lake that reflects the sky, disoriented and weary. “I am Yuri. Is that a _what_ or a _who?_ I used to know. And you… I know you but I cannot say it. It hurts my mouth and chest and mind when I try.”

He glares at Otabek, blaming him for belonging to a name that is every breath of wind through the trees, every rush of water, every rumble of shifting rocks.

“I can’t say it either,” Otabek admits. He’s never even thought to try. “When I must give a name, I call myself Otabek.”

 _Why?_ he asks again.

The mountains give no response as Otabek shifts the land so that they are at the edge of his realm once more. He turns to Yuri.

“Thrice you have come here, and thrice you will go,” Otabek says softly. “But know this: if you return, you will not leave.”

The Wanderer nods his acceptance, but not his promise. 

***  
  


Otabek is there to meet the Wanderer the fourth time he arrives, and Yuri greets him with a curt tip of his head.

He wears the dust and sweat of traveling, the distance painted in his body’s lean angles and his threadbare garb; he is unharmed, with alert eyes and a determined set to his jaw.

Yuri is no longer his Wanderer, for he did not wander here and he will wander no more.

“You chose to return, though you will never leave.”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“You have saved my life three times,” Yuri says steadily, “and I could not let them find you with their iron, their blades, their hatred and fear.”

“Others have tried. They failed, as these too will fail. You should not have come.”

“This won’t be like it was before. The world has changed, and they have learned.”

“Some things do not change.” The mountains shudder as they remember. It will hurt, yes, but many things hurt and they have never learned to fear. “The army will march. Their water will turn brackish in its casks, and there will be no stream or lake to replace them. Their food will rot, and they will find no prey to provide fresh meat. Disease will come for them, and they will not see the bears and lynx that hunt in the frozen nights. You should not have come.”

“No.” His words are sad, unyielding. “You must listen.”

“Then speak.”

The trees fall silent as the birds cease their songs, and even the wind makes itself soft and slow as the Wanderer tells his story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nice outline you have there... wouldn't it be a shame if something _happened_ to it?" - Yuri   
> (you little bastard you were supposed to have ~aesthetic~ not an actual backstory jfc) 
> 
> Anyway, Lou, I thought I could stick to the plan and write something under 3k and now I'm being punished for my hubris.

Yuri is not safe, but he is free. No one would dare follow him into the mountains. 

He believes that they are afraid.

This is true.

The soldiers believe that there is no need to give chase.

This is also true.

He has heard that the mountains do not tolerate intrusion, but he does not intend to draw their ire; he will keep to the foothills and trust that their fear is stronger than the lure of a lone defector. Though the threat of winter looms, the season is early yet. He worries instead over water and wounds, over hungry bears, over the winter fever that leaves its victims with weak limbs and bleeding gums.

He will fight against fate. He will not fight with orders and iron.

He is going home.

Yuri recognizes his mistake when the storm comes.

It does not build or grow, for even here, it has too much of the mountain in it to hesitate. It throws dust and grit into his eyes, and ice would be far gentler than the wind that forces him to his knees. Yuri climbs to his feet again and again, desperate to find shelter, until finally the cold strips his thoughts away and all he knows is that he must keep going. 

After what might be minutes or days, the storm ends as quickly as it began.

The trail Yuri follows is straight, clear, and so much higher than it should be. His pack is gone; Yuri remembers fumbling with the straps, unable to rise under its weight, and some distant part of him insists that he turn back and search for it.

There is no path behind him. He takes a step anyway, too weary to understand what his eyes tell him, and jagged boulders block his descent.

Yuri walks deeper into the mountains. His feet are clumsy, his numb fingers unable to draw his cloak more tightly around his shaking shoulders, but he does not stop. The path will take him home if he can just keep moving.

As the last of his strength fails, the trail turns to lichen-spattered rocks. The crows caw, and though Yuri wants to sleep, their harsh voices rasp too loudly. He would throw something at them if he wasn’t so tired.

Yuri manages to curse the figure that steps from a cloud of whirling black wings. He’d never meant to trespass.

He just wanted to come home.

***

When Yuri wakes, the mountains lie behind him and the whisper of frost is gentle on his skin. He finds a trail soon enough, a winding, tricky thing worn into the earth by countless generations of travelers, and follows it down.

The villagers are shocked by his arrival. Yuri does his best to explain, but he speaks very little of their tongue and remembers even less of his journey through the mountains. He lies, speaking of a trading caravan, delayed and lost to the storm before they could reach the city in which they’d hoped to winter, and hopes that they do not see the markings of a soldier in his bearing.

Later, Yuri learns that the city he had named rests on the far side of the impassable peaks, that the route he alluded to was nonsensical, and that here, there had been no storm. 

He makes himself useful. There is no question of further travel until spring, and though Yuri is unskilled in many of the tasks they require, he is young and strong and does not complain. He speaks only when necessary, and when he is caught gazing at the mountains long after the sun sinks beneath the horizon, he tells them that he is remembering the friends he lost to its merciless slopes. 

Yuri ignores the sharp tug that promises death should he choose to follow its call; he rubs at his face and hands until his skin is raw and pretends to shiver when the wind pierces his furs.

For a while, it is enough.

No one comes to ask after a missing soldier boy, and no one questions why a merchant’s apprentice would have such thick callouses across his palms or wake at the lightest of footfalls. Yuri isn’t certain what the villagers would think if they were to find him out – would they brand him a threat? A coward? Or would they understand that his soul had grown a little more wild, a little more desperate, each time he woke and marched and ate and fought at another’s command? Yuri knows that he cannot not stay here.

But for a while, it is enough. 

It is enough until there is no more coarse, frozen brush for the sheep and horses to graze upon, until the meager stores of hay run low, until the days lengthen but not a trickle of snowmelt revives the dry stream bed.

Yuri feels their gazes heavy on his back, though when he turns, there are no accusing eyes cast his way. The elders whisper to each other about the mountains’ spirit, about the endless winters of its peaks, and Yuri does not know how to answer when they ask if he is cold.

Perhaps they are not wondering if Yuri brought the winter with him when he stumbled out of the mountains, whether it is his fault that they cannot yet move the flocks to the spring pastures, yet the question grows in his own mind. He considers storming into that forbidden land and demanding to know why he does not feel the cold that seems to follow him and what it means when he dreams of dark eyes and white flowers and a name made of music.

 _Not yet,_ the mountains say instead. _Not yet._

Yuri runs. Of course he does: though the winter might nothing more than coincidence, he will not wait for anger to bloom from hardship. He tells himself that they do not need another mouth to feed as he leaves his borrowed furs where the wind cannot steal them, and he runs.

He will be able to hunt in the mountains. Not much, perhaps not enough, but Yuri is reasonably confident that he can make it to spring. After all, he will not freeze.

He is careful not to wander too far.

Yuri does not starve, and he does not freeze, and spring eventually arrives.

When the fever sinks deep roots into his lungs that leave him coughing until he can’t stand, Yuri wonders if the mountains have decided that they regret letting him go the first time. He dreams of crows pecking and scraping at his skin; he wakes, and the merest brush of his hair against his face feels like fire. He sleeps again. Water flows over his body, bright as gemstones, swirling with blues and greens and reds. A somber shadow watches him with concern, offers heat with shockingly gentle hands, but Yuri is already burning.

He cannot find the stream. He can hear it laughing, tumbling over rocks and crashing into its banks, hidden no matter how far he chases it. When Yuri calls out to it, begging it to stay still, he can only gasp through the sand in his throat.

Yuri walks. This is not the path he meant to take. He is not sure where it leads.

He knows that he is going home. 

***

The second time Yuri wakes to find himself alive and alone is no less strange than the first: that is, it does not feel strange at all. It is a choice, not a destiny, and Yuri trusts that he will choose correctly.

He finds a town, one large enough to be used to the comings and goings of travelers, and tells himself that it is only until he has gathered enough supplies for the trip home. It is a long walk, and not one it would be wise to attempt on his own. He is not ready to leave.

The residents of this town do not gather their flocks and move on as spring turns to summer, and its permanence lends an inconsistency to which Yuri is unaccustomed. At times, it seems as if the town belongs to its inhabitants no more than a tree belongs to a nesting bird.

The travelers bring news. Most of it does not interest Yuri, but he listens closely when they mention soldiers. They bring stories of the mountains too, of armies vanishing without a trace and lakes that never run dry, guarded by a spirit that is by turns monstrous and unknowable.

And, eventually, they recognize him.

Yuri had known that the soldiers would pass through the town – word of their gradual approach has marked their progress for weeks now – but they should not be here now. It is too late to vanish into the foothills: they circle him in the moonlit street, weapons drawn, and they are afraid.

When they make out his features in the dim light, there are no shouts of _deserter_ or _coward._ Instead, the color drains from their faces and Yuri realizes that they are not hunting the missing soldier – they are hunting what he has become.

 _Ghost,_ they whisper. _Demon. Spirit._

Yuri runs. When they bar his path, he fights, but he does not fight as a soldier. He is a wild thing, and he was wild even before the mountains had left their mark. He is faster than the soldiers, stronger, more agile; when they flinch back from his snarls, Yuri breaks away.

He is faster.

He is faster even though he is dizzy with pain and drenched in blood, fast enough that the soldiers cannot catch him, but neither is he able to outrun them.

The river is near.

Yuri knows that he will fall as he begins to climb the jagged, rocky outcroppings down to the water below. He has no choice.

In the brief moments between when his foot slips and the current claims him, Yuri sees the path he has been following.


End file.
